Interview – SF CIO and Tim O’Reilly

Empowering citizens to get stuff done
-datasf.com

Exec orders – require agencies to get out there. require dep’t heads to do it. 50 peers in big meeting. mayor can call them out. Need someone who gets it.

Find pockets of innovation…in city government…and nurture those….so valuable in govt. build and support them. Grassroots army….build and support approaches. Momentum going…make it indispensable…and then politically indispensable..services being provided and people like it…and then translated into elections…and what takes to get elected

Also helps to have mayor who gets it….absolutely feerless. willing to go out of comfort zone

Platform idea….govt should be figuring out platform that encourages marketplace.

Everything can be out there…don’t want to be in place of deciding

Pothole – infrastructure to allow…open 311, seeclickfix

Every dept asked to be cut 30% across the board….for him, that’s how to cut $21 million dollars…cities need to learn from them and how to be scrappy again…

On Thurs…passed a policy that when doing RFP for software over $10k…you have to consider open source and prove it of why need commercial. Very controversial…not saying you should use open source but just consider it.

If you built the movement, it will support the potholes you run into…

Financial suite was built in 1992…in COBOLT…reason have it. 42 unions. 28,000 employees…20 years of complexity in the system…require $100M to change. Break problem in pieces..

Chipping away at it…

External pressure good…only way govt could change is through outside pressure

Don’t have capacity to do everything. Pressure good. Takes time. Large bureaucracy.

Shared services b/w cities…starting to share but not enough. Open311…working on that API…lots of meetings with city attorneys.

Environmental agency working with other agencies…dealing with rules/regulations of other citites and states w/ rules/regs…becomes prioritization that is hard to do. Suite of common projects. Pool of resources.

Very rigid set of rules with unions…have to show that doesn’t have a negative effect on their lives. threat of employment….whats need for me as city employee job?

Work with tech unions to show..that by going to open source…getting trained on latest and greatest.

San Fran – City and County in one….

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